Language Mixing in an English-Medium University Context: Language Ideologies of Cross-border Mainland Chinese Students in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of cross-border mainland Chinese students’ ideologies with respect to language mixing in an English-medium university context in multilingual Hong Kong. The findings revealed that most participants held multiple and sometimes contradictory ideologies about language mixing in the university context, often wavering between different ideologies. While their monolingual ideologies privileged linguistic purism and characterized language mixing in deficit terms, their multilingual ideologies conceptualized language mixing as a relatively unmarked language practice, leading to positive evaluations of language mixing. The study also found that some participants moved beyond the dichotomy between monolingual and multilingual ideologies and espoused the ideology of sociolinguistic competence. With an emphasis on one’s ability to use language appropriately in context, the ideology of sociolinguistic competence prompted some participants to evaluate language mixing in terms of its social appropriateness in particular cultural contexts (Hong Kong versus mainland China) and/or particular communicative situations (in-class versus out-of-class situations). Overall, the findings suggest that the complex language ideologies held by the participants not only reflect their mixed attitudes towards multilingual language practices in the English-medium university context, but also reveal their concerns over academic studies, second language acquisition, cultural preservation, and communicative effectiveness.

Keywords:

• Multilingualism
• language mixing
• sociolinguistic competence
• language ideology
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cantonese is one of the southern dialects in China and is a regional vernacular language which is not normally used in formal writing (Poon 2010). Cantonese and Putonghua are not mutually intelligible.

2 Putonghua is the national language of China and is the spoken form of Modern Standard Chinese.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [grant number 23600416].